... the Ministry of Defence line but also prepared to impose self-censorship in the cause of the 'national interest'. (Photographs of dead bodies were thought to be inappropriate by most newspaper editors and consequently remained unpublished.) In the run up to the Gulf conflict, extensive use was made of the media to demonise Saddam Hussein as either a new Hitler, or a madman; or, ideally, a combination of both. (It is interesting to note that before transforming Saddam into a 'bad guy', the same media had favourably compared him to Thatcher during the 1980s when he was privatising Iraq's economy. [p.60]) At the same time the collapse of Communism had the ...

... on Cold War matters, it explores, via recently released PRO documents, Churchill's struggles within the cabinet between 24 May and 28 May 1940. Lukacs shows that Churchill's leadership almost wobbled at this point. With the BEF routed in Belgium and the French government starting to sue for peace, the cabinet appeasers made concerted efforts to begin talks with Hitler via the Italian ambassador in London. Leading the rush, and spouting many weasel words, were Lord Halifax and R. A. Butler, both favourite politicians of King George VI. Concerned about 'peace and security in Europe', they argued that British interests really lay with the Empire and overseas trade rather than Europe. Churchill only ...

... , the Italian ambassador, and later with the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, although de Courcy suggests that the latter relationship remained platonic. Clearly the sexual politics of the British governing elite in this period can do with further investigation. Mosley eventually married Diana Mitford in secret in Berlin in October 1936. Those present at the ceremony included Hitler and Goebbels. The secrecy attending this event has generally been put down to his chivalrous desire to protect Diana. That such an unashamed Nazi and Hitler lover as Diana ever needed protection was always dubious and now it is absolutely clear that Mosley's motives were less elevated: he did not want Baba to know! Later, when Mosley was ...

... book regularly advertised in Monday World, the Monday Club journal, in the early 1970s), but not as the author of The International Jew, Butler's post WW2 gloss on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. With Butler at that meeting was David Irving. Irving last came to widespread public attention when he produced a book arguing that Hitler didn't know anything about the 'Final Solution'- it had all been done behind his back by the SS. That this is a spectacularly difficult thesis to hold rationally may explain why Irving has a new position. For on Banner's account of the meeting, Irving is now claiming to have found a letter from Hitler which says 'I want ...

... Brady told me, 'I was sent into it by Richard Lawson in 1975, to find out what it was.... we [i.e. those who that December had formed the National Party-- author] thought it was a Tyndallite plot... we came to the conclusion it was a load of old Mosleyites and Hitler cultists'. After the collapse of the National Party in 1977, along with David McCalden, Brady reactivated his membership, as the decision 'had been taken to radicalise the NF from within-- we needed a platform to address NF members. The LSG didn't do anything, have a central agenda. It was a club.' ...

... forced jokes). Any journalist's memoirs are welcome: it's always interesting to get a glimpse into the inner workings of the major media, and Knightley was around the Sunday Times at its peak- and during its subsequent decline- and a participant in a number of that paper's more famous (and infamous) episodes, including Thalidomide, the Hitler diaries (in which he was blameless, I hasten to add), and, most famous of all, the investigation of Philby. His work for the Insight team on Philby was the beginning of a career in which he has repeatedly brushed up against the secret warriors of Langley, Virginia, and SIS. The revelation here in ...

... thus able to regain fighting strength. The German high command decided that the time was not right, the moment was missed, and the British border remained uncrossed. This we know with the benefit of hindsight; but until about 1943, and the lead up to the Allied D-Day landings, the situation was not so clear. What if Hitler  already known to be an impetuous leader  had suddenly decided to cross the 1 This is not to belittle the men who did serve in the Home Guard, many of whom had fought with distinction in the First World War and knew exactly what war was really like. The actor Arnold Ridley, who played the mild-mannered Private Charles ...

... Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1998, £l7.95 Simon Matthews Savitri Devi- real name Maximiani Portas; she was part Greek, part French- is an odd subject for a biography. This is someone of little importance to anyone other than extreme environmentalists and/ or the ultra-right. Even the title is misleading. She never met Hitler (so cannot, logically, have been his 'Priestess') and was not even in Germany during the crucial years of the Third Reich. A long-term resident of India, where she associated with ultra-nationalist Hindus, she spied for the Japanese, providing them with information that helped them occupy Burma in 1941/1942. Finally reaching Germany ...

... one's politics- is reached on p.164 when Kilzer blames the Germans for surrendering at Stalingrad. The author clearly believes this was a bad thing and goes to ingenious lengths  via selective quotations  to show that the big bogey figure of 1939/45 was Winston Churchill....duping Roosevelt....duping Stalin...pointlessly intransigent toward Hitler etc. Kilzer's theory that Bormann was a Communist agent has actually been around since the early 1950s. (9) No evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this view. His book is basically a study of the 'Red Orchestra', an area already covered in detail. The author shows that this was, indeed, a very ...

... Haliburton and Fox probably don't need explaining as much to us Europeans (to Leftists, at any rate). Straussians The Norton book is about the 'Straussian' strain in present-day neo-Conservative thought. The name comes from Leo Strauss, who is someone very few of us had heard of until recently. He was a Jewish refugee who fled from Hitler to the USA in the 1930s, taught political theory mainly at the University of Chicago, and died in 1973. His speciality was the ancient (Greek and Roman) philosophers. He has come to posthumous prominence because of the influence he is supposed to have had on a surprising number of the men who are now big in the ...